The Glacier Walk

The Glacier WalkThere, in the green gaping valley, cow bellslike harbingers – music of the past still clinginglike frost under a new sun, we walk with myhusband’s godfather up the marked Swiss trail.Our two year old blinks from her backpack, eyes and ears finding white flowers, the suddenrush of valley stream – those bells.The white skeleton of a glacier spreads before us,fractured and split at the edges, a thick white core.“We walked here with you as a boy,” he tells my husband. “Only this here.” He motions to the lushexpanse. “All ice. Here where we’re walking now.” My husband pauses. His eyes search the green under our feet, our child’s face beneath her hat, the swath of dirt, the bright, frightened yellow of the flowersat the bend in the trail.